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grunt-crawl

PhantomJS (1.9.x or 2.0.x) web crawler with support for sitemap, static content, and fragment routing.

• 

Getting Started

This plugin requires Grunt ~0.4.5

If you haven't used Grunt before, be sure to check out the Getting Started guide, as it explains how to create a Gruntfile as well as install and use Grunt plugins. Once you're familiar with that process, you may install this plugin with this command:

npm install grunt-crawl --save-dev

Once the plugin has been installed, it may be enabled inside your Gruntfile with this line of JavaScript:

grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-crawl');

PhantomJS is required to run this plugin.

The "crawl" task

Overview

In your project's Gruntfile, add a section named crawl to the data object passed into grunt.initConfig().

grunt.initConfig({
  crawl: {
    myapp: {
      options: {
        baseUrl: "http://example.com",
        content: true,
        contentDir: "www/static",
        depth: 4,
        viewportWidth: 1280,
        viewportHeight: 1024,
        waitDelay: 10000,
        exclude: []
      }
    }
  }
});

Options

options.baseUrl

Type: String Default value: 'http://localhost:9000/'

The base URL of your web site to crawl. A trailing / should be included.

options.content

Type: Boolean Default value: true

A boolean value where true will save static content for each page.

options.contentDir

Type: String Default value: www/static

The directory path to save static content when content saving is enabled.

options.readySelector

Type: String|Boolean Default value: false

The selector that the web crawler will look for a data-status attribute with the value ready.

options.render

Type: Boolean Default value: false

A boolean value where true will use Phantom's capture screenshot functionality to generate screen captures of each crawled page at the given viewport size defined.

options.renderDir

Type: String Default value: tmp

The directory path to save screen captures when screen capture is enabled.

options.sitemap

Type: Boolean Default value: false

A boolean value where true will create a sitemap.xml for your site.

options.sitemapDir

Type: String Default value: www

The directory path to write sitemap.xml.

options.followFragment

Type: Boolean|String Default value: ''

A boolean value where true will crawl fragment routes as well. Unfortunately false will break URI.fragment.js for some dumb reason.

options.fragmentPrefix

Type: String Default value: !

The fragment prefix to use for fragment routing. ! will look for routes similar to #!/. See below for more details.

options.readySelector

Type: Boolean|String Default value: false

An optional argument to specify a selector to search for data-status attribute on each web page. The data-status attribute should be set to "ready".

options.depth

Type: Integer Default value: 4

The depth limit for the web crawler. Anything greater than 5 may exceed the default waitDelay option.

options.viewportWidth

Type: Integer Default value: 1280

The width that PhantomJS will use for its viewport.

options.viewportHeight

Type: Integer Default value: 1024

The height that PhantomJS will use for its viewport.

options.waitDelay

Type: Integer Default value: 10000

An interval in seconds to wait for crawling to finish. Useful for larger sites with lots to crawl, particularly Angular sites with complex and dynamic content binding.

options.exclude

Type: Array Default value: []

Define relative URI patterns to exclude from being crawled. This is useful for ignoring file downloads.

Usage Examples

• Any same origin url will be crawled once including:
  • relative (e.g. about.html)
  • absolute urls (e.g. http://example.com/about.html)
  • fragment-routing urls (e.g. http://example.com/#!/about)

Data Status / Ready Selector

The general idea behind this is that if your site requires Javascript to fill-in content or other data, then a crawler must wait until the page has finished loading. Thus your site should set the data-status attribute to ready for the selector defined in options.readySelector.

An AngularJS example:

Inside app.run:

$rootScope.ready = function() {
  var $scope = _getTopScope();
  $scope.status = 'ready';
  if (!$scope.$$phase) $scope.$apply();
}
 
$rootScope.loading = function() {
  var $scope = _getTopScope();
  $scope.status = 'loading';
  if (!$scope.$$phase) $scope.$apply();
}

In controller:

$scope.ready();

In index.html:

<div ng-view class="main-wrapper" data-status="{{status}}"></div>

Sitemap.xml

grunt.initConfig({
  "crawl": {
    "myapp": {
      "baseUrl": "http://example.com",
      "sitemap": true,
      "sitemapDir": "www"
    }
  }
});

• Todo: provide a way to prioritize routes. All priorities set the same. Possibly auto-adjust by depth?
• Todo: provide a better last modification time. Currently all urls will have last modifications updated at the same time.

Fragment Routing

AngularJS and other Javascript apps that depend on fragment routing are supported. Fragment-based routes will be saved as static content, if enabled, with the content file having the .html suffix.

grunt.initConfig({
  "crawl": {
    "myapp": {
      "baseUrl": "http://example.com",
      "followFragment": true,
      "fragmentPrefix": "!"
    }
  }
});

Rewrite rules for fragment route to static content:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteEngine On
 
  # Search Engine rewrite
  RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^_escaped_fragment_=/?$
  RewriteRule ^.*$ /static/index.html [NC,L]
 
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} index\.html$
  RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^_escaped_fragment_=/([a-zA-Z0-9\/_\-]+)$
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /static/%1.html [NC,L]
</IfModule>

Contributing

In lieu of a formal styleguide, take care to maintain the existing coding style. Add unit tests for any new or changed functionality. Lint and test your code using Grunt.

Release History

(Nothing yet)